What Does the Future of Travel Content Hold in Store?

It may sometimes seem frustrating when we're stuck in our offices, tied to our desks, but travel has come to play a huge role in the content marketing sector. 

Every day at greatcontent, we deal with clients who are engaged in the business of selling plane or train tickets, enticing visitors to hotels or attracting people to bespoke travel experiences. 

Travel is an area where well-written content makes a vast difference, and can really set operators apart. But it's also dynamic and ever-changing. Sometimes, it can be tough to get a purchase on what the market demands, and how to cut through.

With that in mind, we've been consulting the tea leaves, and asking the experts, and have come up with some trends in the travel content world that should play a major role in 2020. 

Ecotourism is fundamental

Dubbed the ?fastest-growing segment of the travel and tourism industry? by research giant EBSCO way back in 2009, ecotourism is finally set to dominate in the luxury travel bracket in 2020 ? and not before time. 

According to Sustainable Travel Report, 42% of vacationers see themselves as self-consciously eco-friendly travellers, and 68% would book a sustainable accommodation provider if given the chance. And holiday rental databases, hotel chains, and even airlines are responding to this sentiment.

In 2020, we can expect ecotourism related blogs to be a popular way to attract attention to resorts, as they differentiate themselves from traditional destinations. And the same applies to upscale eco-lodges and retreats, which offer agrotourism and nature-themed attractions.

And we can also be sure that as well as being optimised for SEO destination descriptions need to have an ecological slant wherever possible, going well beyond listing cocktail bars and swimming pools.

Convenience is king

Having said that ecotourism is on the rise, it seems a little counter-intuitive to say that tourists want life to be easier than ever when they go abroad. However, smoothing out the wrinkles in travel experiences is definitely going to be a major theme as 2020 pans out.

For instance, some companies are emphasising their ability to reduce the financial complexity of travel, by providing cashless transactions (almost) wherever customers go.

Apple has made cashless payments a key selling point, especially when coupled with gold-plated security. Revolut has carved out a niche as a solid provider of currency conversions and digital cash, while mobile banks like N26 are making national borders seem less relevant than ever.

This means that content providers need to use their landing pages and social media to stress how easy travel can be. If they accept cashless payments, that should be foregrounded. Blogs about helping visitors adjust to local conditions are sure to be key traffic generators as well. 

Rebranding unfashionable destinations is taking off

Well, not literally. Actually the trend towards taking ?microcations? in places closer to home is what's taking off ? not long haul flights. As travellers shun carbon-generating flights, previously sidelined destinations in their own nations are coming back into fashion.

The UK is a great example. For decades, its coastal resorts have been emptied as travellers prefer Mediterranean or Caribbean sunshine. But as millions of people realise the costs of their holidays, places like Hastings or Blackpool are coming back.

This trend offers huge opportunities to savvy travel businesses, whether they offer directories of hotels, local attractions for kids, or sports-themed vacations. It's also a great chance to use newsletters to highlight ?under the radar? places ? the kind of forgotten gems that travellers love to hear about.

If UK resorts like Margate can generate travel content in South African magazines, trying to lure visitors, you can bet there's something deeper going on.

This also taps into the need for localised travel content. Companies can't rely on English language content any longer. Now that local destinations are resurging, multilingual destination descriptions and landing pages are vital.

Taking digital lives global

Nowadays, travellers demand that their digital lives follow them wherever their physical bodies go, and this is another area that's fundamental to the future of travel content.

On a basic level, this means ensuring that utilities like WiFi, charging points, plug adapters, computer desks and work chairs, and conference facilities are all presented clearly in product descriptions. Even villa rental companies need to expect that travellers will want to plug in their laptops as soon as they arrive.

But this goes further than sockets and tables. We've mentioned cashless travel, but there's also the issue of portable web access. Providers of services like Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are now promoting themselves as travel-friendly services by allowing users to access blocked content. In fact, they are so popular, that it's not outlandish to expect hotels and VPNs to strike partnerships in 2020.

App developers like the team behind Slack are also making remote working much easier, leveraging the Cloud to create virtual workspaces. And services like ProtonMail make travel a core selling point for their encrypted email servers.

This means that a wide range of companies could mobilise travel in their marketing, while travel companies need to cater to the digital needs of their clients. There's scope here for social media posts, blogs, newsletters, and general reputation management to stress digital security. 

In a world where major travel companies like Marriott have been humiliated by data leaks, that kind of reputation management is a big deal.

Renovate your travel content strategy to succeed in 2020

So, those are a few of the travel trends 2020 has in store. There's much more going on as well, from immersive life-changing experiences to trips for specific demographics. But these trends are likely to dominate going forward, and dynamic travel companies need to respond.

Fortunately, doing so isn't that hard. It just means having the courage to try something different and commit to creating more of the right kind of content. If you're concerned about your ability to reach today's travelers, greatcontent is here to help. We are travel experts and are always on the pulse of the SEO scene.

So choose greatcontent for your future travel content. We'll ensure that your landing pages, blogs, newsletters, your social media posts stay on-trend and that multilingual copywriting captures as much attention as possible.

Text: Sam Urquhart
Image: pexels.com